Pivotal time for Iraq

Published 12:32 pm, Thursday, December 24, 2009

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Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (left), talks to Iraqi Brig. Gen. Nabeel Darwish Mohammad, police director for the town of Abu Ghraib, during a walk through the Abu Ghraib market.

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (left), talks to Iraqi Brig. Gen. Nabeel Darwish Mohammad, police director for the town of Abu Ghraib, during a walk through the Abu Ghraib market.

Pivotal time for Iraq

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Remember Iraq? For months our attention has been focused on Afghanistan, and you can be sure that the surge will be covered exhaustively as it unfolds in 2010.

But the coming year could be even more pivotal in Iraq. The country will hold elections in March to determine its political future. Months of parliamentary horse trading will likely ensue, which could provoke a return to violence. The United States still has 120,000 troops stationed in Iraq, and all combat forces are scheduled to leave by August, further testing the country's ability to handle its own security.

How we draw down in Iraq is just as critical as how we ramp up in Afghanistan: If handled badly, this withdrawal could be a disaster. Handled well, it could leave behind a significant success.

Let's review some history. The surge in Iraq was a success in military terms. It defeated a nasty insurgency, reduced violence substantially, and stabilized the country. But the purpose of the surge was, in President George W. Bush's formulation, to give Iraq's leaders a chance to resolve their major political differences. It was these differences - particularly between Sunnis and Shias - that were fueling the civil war in the first place. If they were not resolved, the war might well begin anew or take some other form that would doom Iraq to a breakup or breakdown.

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Iraq's political differences have not been resolved. The most fraught remains the tussle between the Shias, the country's majority sect, and the Sunnis, a minority that has traditionally been the country's elite. The simplest indication that issues between these two communities are still unsettled is the fact that only a few of the 2 million Iraqis who fled the country between 2003 and 2007 - the vast majority of whom were Sunnis - have returned. (Firm numbers are hard to come by, but they did not add up to more than a few tens of thousands as of this summer.) This month the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reaffirmed that Iraq remains a dangerous place for members of minority groups.

Sunnis in Iraq remain marginalized politically. And there are growing tensions with the Kurds, who run an autonomous quasi state in Iraq's north. The Kurds control three of Iraq's provinces but lay claim to three important cities just across the border that have mixed populations. They have also been flouting the central government's authority regarding oil contracts, negotiating 30 separate deals of their own and blocking the flow of oil out of the region. Add to these problems disputes over the drawing of boundaries and election rules.

The basic challenge is simple to state but extremely difficult to meet. Iraq needs a stable power-sharing deal that keeps all three groups invested in the new country. To make this happen, all three will need to compromise. And the central positive force in all of this can be the United States. In the early years of the occupation, the Bush administration never pushed the Iraqi government enough to force it to cut deals. This was a historic error because the U.S. had enormous political leverage with the Iraqis at the time. Even later, the Bush administration shied away from pressing the Iraqis too hard, a common thread in its relations with the Afghans and Pakistanis, too.

Yet the United States continues to have considerable influence in Iraq. By all accounts, U.S. diplomacy has been crucial to getting the Kurds to agree to the March elections. President Obama is reported to have called Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani and pressed him to withdraw his objections, removing the final obstacle. As American troops draw down, American diplomacy should get aggressive and persistent, pushing the three groups to resolve the basic issues of power sharing.

The costs of the Iraq war have been great and perhaps indefensible. But Iraq could still turn out to be an extraordinary model for the Arab world. Its people are negotiating their differences for the most part peacefully; its politics is becoming more pluralistic and democratic; its press is free; its provinces have autonomy; its focus has shifted to business and wealth creation, not religion and jihad. The Obama administration has a window of opportunity to cement these gains in 2010.